Robert Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land

“As to who cares,” Ben went on, “a lot of people care very much—and a lot more will care, once this picture shapes up. Ever heard of the Lyle Drive?”

“Of course. That’s what the Champion used.”

“And every other space ship, these days. Who invented it?”

“I don’t—wait a minute! You mean she—”

“Hand the little lady a cigar! Dr. Mary Jane Lyle Smith. She knew she had something important, even though development work remained to be done on it. So before she left on the expedition, she applied for a dozen odd basic patents and placed it all in a corporate trust—not a non-profit corporation, mind you—then assigned control and interim income to the Science Foundation. So eventually the government got control of it—but your friend with the face of an angel owns it. No possible doubt. It’s worth millions, maybe hundreds of millions; I couldn’t guess.”

They brought in dinner. Caxton used ceiling tables to protect his lawn; he lowered one down in front of his chair and another to Japanese height so that Jill could sit on the grass. “Tender?” he asked.

“Ongerful!” she answered with her mouth full.

“Thanks. Remember, I cooked it.”

“Ben,” she said after swallowing, “how about Smith being a—I mean, being illegitimate? Can he inherit?”

“He’s not illegitimate. Doctor Mary Jane was at Berkeley, and California laws deny the concept of bastardy. Same for Captain Brant, as New Zealand also has civilized laws on the subject. While under the laws of the home State of Doctor Ward Smith, Mary Jane’s husband, a child born in wedlock is legitimate, come hell or high water. We have here, Jill, a man who is the Simon-pure legitimate child of three different parents.

“Huh? Now wait a minute, Ben; he can’t be it both ways. One or the other but not both. I’m not a lawyer but—”

“You sure ain’t. Such legal fictions bother a lawyer not at all. Smith is legitimate different ways in different jurisdictions, all kosher and all breaking his way—even though he is probably a bastard in his physical ancestry. So he inherits. Besides that, while his mother was wealthy, both his fathers were at least well to do. Brant was a bachelor until just before the expedition; he had ploughed most of his scandalous salary as a pilot on the Moon run back into Lunar Enterprises, Limited. You know how that stuff has boomed—they just declared another three-way stock dividend. Brant had one vice, gambling—but the bloke won regularly and invested that, too. Ward Smith had family money; he was a medical man and scientist by choice. Smith is heir to both of them.”

“Whew!”

“That ain’t half, honey. Smith is heir to the entire crew.”

“Huh?”

“All eight signed a ‘Gentlemen Adventurers’ contract, making them all mutually heirs to each other—all of them and their issue. They did it with great care, using as models similar contracts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that had stood up against every effort to break them. Now these were all high-powered people; among them they had quite a lot. Happened to include considerable Lunar Enterprises stock, too, besides what Brant held. Smith might turn out to own a controlling interest, or at least a key bloc in a proxy fight.”

Jill thought about the childlike creature who had made such a touching ceremony out of just a drink of water and felt sorry for him. But Caxton went on: “I wish I could sneak a look at the Envoy’s log. I know they recovered it—but I doubt if they’ll ever release it.”

“Why not, Ben?”

“Because it’s a nasty story. I got just enough to be sure before my informant sobered up and clammed up. Dr. Ward Smith delivered his wife of child by Caesarian section—and she died on the table. He seems to have worn his horns complacently until then. But what he did next shows that he knew the score; with the same scalpel he cut Captain Brant’s throat—then cut his own. Sorry, hon.”

Jill shivered. “I’m a nurse. I’m immune to such things.”

“You’re a liar and I love you for it. I was on police beat for three years, Jill; I never got hardened to it.”

“What happened to the others?”

“I wish I knew. If we don’t break the bureaucrats and high brass loose from that log, we’ll never know—and I am enough of a starry-eyed newsboy to think we should know. Secrecy begets tyranny.”

“Ben, he might be better off if they gypped him out of his inheritance. He’s very… uh, unworldly.”

“The exact word, I’m sure. Nor does he need all that money; the Man from Mars will never miss a meal. Any of the governments and any of a thousand-odd universities and scientific institutions would be delighted to have him as a permanent, privileged guest.”

“He’d better sign it over and forget it.”

“It’s not that easy. Jill, you know about the famous case of General Atomics versus Larkin, et al?”

“Uh, not really. You mean the Larkin Decision. I had to study it in school, same as everybody. But what’s it got to do with Smith?”

“Think back. The Russians sent the first rocket to the Moon, it crashed. The United States and Canada combine to send another one; it gets back but leaves nobody on the Moon. So when the United States and the Commonwealth are getting set to send a colonizing one jointly under the nominal sponsorship of the Federation and Russia is mounting the same deal on their own, General Atomics steals a march by sending one of their own from an island leased from Ecuador—and their men are still there, sitting pretty and looking smug when the Federation vessel shows up… followed by the Russian one.

“You know what happened. General Atomics, a Swiss corporation American controlled, claimed the Moon. The Federation couldn’t just brush them off; that would have been too raw and anyhow the Russians wouldn’t have held still. So the High Court ruled that a corporate person, a mere legal fiction, could not own a planet; therefore the real owners were the flesh-and-blood men who had maintained the occupation—Larkin and associates. So they recognized them as a sovereign nation and took them into the Federation—with some melon slicing for those on the inside and fat concessions to General Atomics and its daughter corporation, Lunar Enterprises. This did not entirely suit anybody and the Federation High Court was not all powerful in those days—but it was a compromise everybody could swallow. It resulted in some tight rules for colonizing planets, all based on the Larkin Decision and intended to avoid bloodshed. Worked, too—it’s a matter of history that World War Three did not result from conflict over space travel and such. So now the Larkin Decision is solidly a part of our planetary law and applies to Smith.”

Jill shook her head. “I don’t see the connection. Martinis—”

“Think, Jill. By our laws, Smith is a sovereign nation in himself—and sole owner of the planet Mars.”

JILL LOOKED ROUND-EYED. “I’ve certainly had too many martinis, Ben. I would swear that you said that that patient owns the planet Mars.”

“He does. He maintained occupation of it, unassisted, for the required length of time. Smith is the planet Mars—King, President, sole civic body, what you will. If the skipper of the Champion had not left colonists behind, Smith’s tenure might have failed. But he did, and that continues occupation even though Smith came to Earth. But Smith doesn’t have to split with them; they are mere immigrants until he grants them Martian citizenship.”

“Fantastic!”

“It surely is. Also it’s legal. Honey, do you now see why so many people are interested in who Smith is and where he came from? And why the administration is so damned anxious to keep him under a rug? What they are doing isn’t even vaguely legal. Smith is also a citizen of the United States and of the Federation, by derivation—dual citizenship with no conflict. It’s illegal to hold a citizen, even a convicted criminal, incommunicado anywhere in the Federation; that’s one of the things we settled in World War Three. But I doubt if Smith knows his rights. Also, it has been considered an unfriendly act all through history to lock up a visiting friendly monarch—which is what he is—and not to let him see people, especially the press, meaning me. You still won’t sneak me in as a thumbfingered electrician?”